Sunday, 8 February 2015

Last year wasn't the best time for our garden. We gave it very little attention, all told. Our free weekends were mostly spent walking the hills around our Welsh home, and then we promptly upped and left for the whole Autumn. December seemed to run away with us, and now it's 2015 and it's a mess!

We've managed to put in a couple of Sunday afternoons work recently and already things are feeling better. We've been digging over what was left of our veggie patch, removing the remains of last years sunflowers, beans and spuds. Tidying up the edges and having empty beds full of freshly dug earth has made the world of difference to this area. The hens still have free reign in here too and and are enjoying digging over the freshly turned earth for us. Unfortunately we've also caught them helping themselves to the freshest tenderest parts of the purple sprouting which might be why we're not seeing any signs of shoots on that yet.

The fourth in our set of beds is still awash with little weeds and the dead remains of last years annuals - but the bulbs don't seem to care and are happily pushing through anyway.

Joe spliced in some new hazel sticks to the archway currently supporting our apple trees. Once they're big enough the two trees should be self supporting, but for now we needed to repair the damage done by high winds over the last few months, causing all of the top cross pieces to snap.

Talking of high winds, last winter we had many friends lose fence panels and kindly donate them to our wood burner cause (us included). Unfortunately they've spent the last year sitting on our patio waiting to be sorted but that's finally done and is no longer the eyesore it once was. We now have a good pile of wood ready for burning, a small pile that needs splitting into smaller pieces, and a bonfire pile of bits that are too thin to be worth the effort. We can now see most of the patio again! (Trust me in saying that this is an improvement - I don't have a "before" photo to demonstrate this).

Joe also set to our established fruit trees with some freshly sharpened secateurs, giving them a winter prune. The bird feeders have had a wash and are now back in position with fresh seed.

That sounds like a lot all listed out like that, but its only been a few hours work! Things are looking much tidier and while there are still quite a few jobs on the list it feels like we're now in a place to plan what we want to do with the space this year...